William Benjamin's Home Page


 

My full name is William Emmanuel Benjamin. Friends and colleagues call me Bill.

 

General Information   

D.O.B.  7 December 1944, at Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Citizenship:  Canadian

My profession: music theorist, with interests in music aesthetics and composition 

My affiliation: A faculty member at the School of Music, University of British Columbia since  1978, I have been Full Professor since 1983, and I was Director of the School of Music from 1984 to 1991. Previous to 1978 I taught at Wellesley College (1970-72)and at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1972-78).

My education:  All my degrees are in music. I received a Bachelor's degree from McGill in 1965 (in composition), and both the Masters (1968) and the Ph.D. (1976)  from Princeton, where I worked in both music theory and composition.

My Family: My wife's name is Carol Read. She is a fiction and non-fiction writer and we have been married since 1998. I have three children from a previous marriage: Mira (23), Zachary (20), and Sai (18). Mira is just completing her Bachelor's in violin performance at McGill, Zachary is entering third-year cello performance at  UBC,  and Sai is finishing high school.

 

 Contact Information

      Email: w.benjamin@ubc.ca 
      Office Phone: (604)-822-9193
      Office Fax: (604) 822-4884
      Mailing Address: School of Music
                                       University of British Columbia
                                       6361 Memorial Road
                                       Vancouver, BC
                                       V6T 1Z2  

Special Affiliation for 2008 (calendar year)

     I have been appointed as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies (PWIAS), an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of British Columbia. http://www.pwias.ubc.ca/.  This appointment is for one year only. 
 
    The research I am conducting at PWIAS is described below (under Current Research). If you want a taste of what I'm thinking about, check out the PWIAS web site to hear a podcast of a talk I delivered at the Institute on 23 April 2008. The ttitle of the talk is "Reproducing music in silence: what musicality is and how we cultivate it."
 
    You can reach me at PWIAS, by calling the Reception at (604) 822-4782